She nodded as she pushed herself up to her feet with Eddie’s help. She was a little woozy and leaned back on the post for balance. The city was now quiet. The screams had died down, leaving only an eerie silence.
“You can feel all of it. The screams, the pain, the death. You can feel the monsters too, can’t you?” Alfonzo sheathed his sword into his holster. “Can you keep going?”
She nodded again weakly even though she felt sick at the idea. She didn’t have much of a choice. “I will be all right.” She would need to learn to swim in this new tide. “I was caught off guard.”
“Good.” Alfonzo was watching her, his expression stern. “Do you realize now what he is? What he really is?” He jerked his head to the street. Bella and Eddie took the cue, and they started walking.
“I think I am learning.” She pulled her coat tighter around herself as she followed them. Once more, she did it because she had no choice. Eddie was still holding the end of her chain. “Is this still necessary?” She lifted her hands to gesture at the links that joined her wrists. “I have nowhere I can run.”
“I’m sorry,” Alfonzo replied without looking at her. He was already scanning the streets, keeping an eye out. “I wish I could trust you, but you lost that chance when you sided with him.”
That was fair. This was a fate she had made for herself. Her decisions had led to this moment, and now she would suffer for it. They walked around the remains of the giant abomination that they had felled. The horror of it was another piece of the scenery of death that had been painted with such a broad brush around her. It was only another body in the mangled pile. Another victim of the corruption that had been unleashed.
And it seemed as though even the buildings themselves were not immune to the plague that Vlad had brought. Walls now twisted in at odd angles or stretched up farther than was natural. Windows and doors were bent out of proportion.
She knew this city well. They were only a few streets away from her home. But she had no inkling of an idea of where she was. Signs advertised roads she did not recognize. Part of it was still Boston, but part of it was somewhere else—somewhere older.
One of the old Roma in the camp she traveled with used to tell her stories of Bucharest, Prague, and the beautiful cities of Eastern Europe. How the stones used to create the structures were shaped differently than they were here. How they were rougher, more unevenly shaped, and how it gave the structures so much more character than in America.
America simply lacked the age, and was more interested in growing quickly than growing correctly.
The spires and the ironwork seemed somehow both ornate and worn smooth by time. Like a memory of a craftsman’s labor. She had never seen the streets of older places other than in paintings and galleries.
But this place felt old.
More than that…it linked together in odd and unusual ways. Two buildings that had seemingly nothing to do with each other blended together. It was unnatural. It was eerie. And it was disturbingly familiar. Not because she knew the buildings, but almost as though she could recognize the architect.
She wondered if she traced her fingers over the stones of the nearest building she would not see that throne room in her mind’s eye. If she would not hear the vampire’s words echoing through her mind.
If she might not feel his hand on hers, asking for her to dance.
It is not Dracula’s army that has been unleashed.
It is Dracula himself.
This was not her city any longer. Nor was it any other. It was a dream made manifest…a nightmare. His nightmare had come to share itself with the living and devour all that it could.
All this lived within him. All the monsters that stalked the shadows that she could sense watching them were somehow part of him. Creatures of a fiction he had composed. No—children of a god who had rewritten reality to suit him better.
This is what he is.
She paused to gawk in horror at the sight of several bodies impaled on a fencepost. Stacked on top of each other, one at a time, like meat on a skewer. Fresh blood dripped from them like rivulets on a fountain, and all she could feel was the fear that still echoed from their cooling corpses.
She did not have long to dwell on them.
A voice cut through the unnerving silence.
“Greetings, hunters! My Master bids you welcome to his new empire.”
She cringed. She knew that voice. Zadok.
“Be quiet, Mordecai.” Walter’s patience was wearing thin. Dangerously thin. He only had so much of it left to go around, and he did not want to waste it on the incubus. The captain of the vampire’s demons had chosen to stroll about in his natural shape, his gray-purple skin contrasting sharply with his blond hair and black horns.
“No. No, I will not. I have a vested interested in this.”
Correction—a whining incubus.
“If you wish to speak to our Master, then go do so.” He pinched the bridge of his nose. “Do not take up your arguments with me.”
“He won’t listen to me. He’s too distracted.” A long tail curled around his ankle. Far too personally. “Maybe I can convince you… hm?” The incubus purred. “What’ll it take for me to convince you to let me join Zadok in his game?”
Walter glared at him and saw only amusement in the demon’s purple eyes. Mordecai smiled playfully with a twist of lush lips decorated with a silver ring in the center of the lower one.
“Do not touch me.”
Mordecai hummed. “Poor boy. You’re so frustrated. I can let you vent some of that if you want. I can make it good for you.” His form shifted into that of a fully nude woman, palms tracing up over her stomach to cup her own breasts. “Is this better?”
Walter snarled and grabbed a fistful of “her” hair and slammed Mordecai facedown onto the table. The illusion shattered, and the demon howled in laughter. “Oh, I knew this is how you’d like it! I pegged you for the angry fuck.”
“Be silent, you cretin.”
“You know how you can be certain I’ll leave you alone? Let me go join Zadok. You can command my demons as well as I.”
“Why are you so intent on the hunters?”
“I have an interest in this, I told you. Will you let me up now? Or do you want to fuck me after all? You can if you want to.” By his tone, Walter knew it wouldn’t be a high price to pay for the lascivious creature.
Disgusted, Walter threw the incubus away from him. “Enough.”
Mordecai staggered and nearly fell, landing against the wall. He swished his long tail around behind him, frustrated but amused. He smoothed a hand over rakish blond hair surrounding the two black horns that twisted up and out of the strands.
“What interest do you have in them? No lies, and no games, demon.”
Mordecai sighed and stretched languidly like a cat before folding his arms behind his head and propping himself up on the painted wallpaper. “The girl. I danced with her at the Master’s gala. Now, I want to dance with her.”
“You’re a child.”
“I haven’t stopped thinking about her, Walter.” The incubus’s brow furrowed. “That’s never happened to me before. I can’t even fuck right. I’m too distracted. I have to have her. I have to. I have this awful itch that I cannot get rid of.”
“I did not need to know that, although I cannot say I’m surprised you have caught a disease.”
“That’s not what I meant! I meant, like, an itch inside. Maybe once I rut her a few times it’ll go away. Please, Walter. Please.”
Walter shut his eyes and prayed for patience. He clearly needed more than he already possessed to survive this idiocy. He was to be surrounded by lovesick children while they were at war… at the whim of a lovesick child, not that he would ever say so to Dracula’s face. The American armies would arrive shortly, and the city, while not large, needed to be secured and managed. The surviving humans would need to be rounded up and penned before the creatures that grew from the shadows destroyed them all in their hu
nger. And now he had a lovesick incubus to cope with.
As always, his work would be easier to accomplish on his own.
“Fine. Go.”
“Thank you! Oh, thank you!” A kiss on his cheek, marked with the press of a metal ring, sent Walter snarling in a rage and raking a sharp-nailed claw through the air. But the incubus was already gone.
Walter forced his nails to retract and growled low. He had nowhere to spend his fury. It was a pointless expenditure of energy. Sitting down at the table, he pulled over a map of the city and began to plan.
Someone needed to.
“They’re all children.”
Looking up at the interrupting voice, he shook his head and turned back to the map. “Yes. They are. Hello, Elizabeth.”
The woman had appeared sitting on the end of the table, a glass of red liquid in her hand. She was beautiful, with chestnut hair and surprisingly warm-colored skin. She had all the hallmarks of a youthful thing.
But it was a careful façade. She was a dangerous monster—one of their strongest elder vampires. While she was one more step removed from their Master’s blood than he was—the product of a sire Dracula had made directly—she was no less frightening for it. Beneath the sweet and charming exterior was a cold and calculating fiend.
“Boys. Tempt them with a sweet prize where they might lay their seed, and they lose their minds.” She sighed and reached out to pull a few pieces of paper over to her, scanning them quickly. “Bees cannot resist a flower in bloom. Well,” she eyed him, a playful glint in her green eyes, “most can’t. How is our dear uncle fairing? Does he have his new pet back?”
“No. He wishes to test her strength of will versus his horrors.” He ignored her flirtatious expression as he ignored all her advances. He had withstood them for three hundred years since she had answered “Uncle” Dracula’s call to serve him. He had no intention of cracking now.
She could not be trusted.
Elizabeth laughed and lay back on the table, draping herself across the papers and notes without any care in the world. “The fool. He cannot simply allow himself some happiness, can he?”
“No.”
“Sounds familiar.” She winked at him. “Like father, like son. Try not to be too much of a hypocrite, Walter. You wear it poorly.”
“He is not my father. Nor is he your uncle.”
“The humans measure their names by blood relationships. Why shouldn’t we?”
“It’s childish and sentimental.”
“I suppose, then, he would be my great-uncle and you would be my true uncle. And that would make my advances on you quite revolting, wouldn’t they?” She smiled. A painfully thin and practiced expression. “Oh, well. No matter.”
Gods in Hell, I redouble my prayer for patience. “Why are you here, Elizabeth?”
“To help you! Left all alone to round up the humans and to defend our new home from the rest. You will need assistance. And I am quite brilliant, after all.” She toyed with a lock of her own chestnut pooling around her head.
He did not bother arguing the last point. It was true. She was a manipulative mastermind, and that was precisely why he did not, nor would he ever, trust her. But he did need the help. He was never one to place his pride before logic. Even if it did mean he would have to put up with her smirking commentary.
Better her than the alternatives of Zadok and Mordecai.
“Very well, Elizabeth.”
She sat up from where she was lying and smiled wickedly. “Good. Where do we begin?”
Zadok.
Maxine sighed drearily. “Damn it.”
The vampire smiled at her and placed a hand to his chest and bowed. “Wonderful to see you too, my lady.”
Eddie raised his gun to fire at the vampire, who seemed entirely unalarmed by its presence. And for good reason. Maxine reached out and put her hand on Eddie’s gun and lowered it. “Save your ammunition. He is not really there. He is a mirage.” She could not sense any soul or emotions coming from the apparition.
“Very good! I would hardly be so foolish as to stand here before three capable hunters. Don’t think so little of my intelligence. And I am called the Illusionist, after all. I have not come for a duel, regardless.”
“Then go away, fiend.” Alfonzo had his sword in his hand all the same. He rightfully didn’t trust the vampire, illusion or not. “Unless you fight us, we have no business with you.”
“Oh, but I have come to welcome you to our new city. This place is ours now, make no mistake. I come with an offer to you. Give me the Master’s new prize, and the rest of you may leave here alive. Turn back, hunters, and save your own lives.”
“No.” Alfonzo’s tone left no room for discussion.
“Very well. But I’m afraid you will not get much farther into our city than this.”
“You cannot stop us. We will fight through whatever you put in our way.”
Zadok chuckled. “Therein lies the naivety of mortals. You think you can simply punch and slash your way to Dracula. You will make it not an inch closer if he does not allow it.”
“What do you mean?” Alfonzo growled. “Speak plain.”
“Ask Maxine. She understands.” Zadok pointed at her with a dark smile. “She can feel it.”
She pulled back half a step. Alfonzo didn’t look at her; none of the hunters did. They knew better than to take their eyes off an enemy.
“What is he talking about, Maxine?”
“This…this place isn’t Boston anymore. It’s something else. It’s as though…” She looked off, trying to sort out her words through the hum of the city around her. Then it came to her. The reason everything was so very loud. It wasn’t simply the death and the destruction. It was something more than that. “It’s as though this place has become one of the creatures itself. It is as though it… is alive.”
“Yes! Very good!” Zadok seemed honestly proud of her. “You are so wonderfully clever. How I wish you could be mine. Ah, well, c’est la vie, my dove. Maybe in another life.” He sighed dreamily. “And you are very correct. My Master’s plague stretches to far more than flesh and blood. He has claimed this place as his. He commands the very brick and mortar of this city. You will wander helplessly in circles, my dear sweet hunters. In time, you will wear yourself down.”
“You’re lying,” Alfonzo snapped.
“We shall see.” He shrugged idly. “I needn’t attack you. I only need to watch you burn your candles low. And when you admit the trap you are in, that is when I will come for you. But my offer stands. If any one of you wishes to turn back and leave this place and spare yourselves a painful death—you will walk out of the city limits unharmed and with our blessing.”
“Never.” Alfonzo snarled. He stormed forward and swung his sword through the air, intending to cut the vampire in half. But it passed harmlessly through the illusion. “Face me!”
Zadok was still smiling. “Why?”
“Fight me with honor!”
That inspired the vampire to laugh. “Honor. What a charmingly mortal notion. Honor. Dignity. Fairness.” He scoffed. “These are concepts created to keep you trapped within a spider’s web. They are constructs you build around your society to try to ensure that those with morals play within their pens only to be fed upon by those without such trivial philosophies. Abandon them, hunter, and see yourself plainly for what you are—a bloodthirsty thing driven forward only by the need for revenge.”
“You’re lying.”
“Am I? Once again, I think we shall see.” Zadok took a step back then folded a hand at his waist and bowed low. “My offer stands. Oh, and dear Maxine? I nearly forgot. My Master sends you his love.”
Alfonzo went to swing his sword again, useless as it was. Zadok vanished in a blink. But his laughter echoed in the air. “Walk your feet bloody for all I care. Prove me wrong.”
Maxine was shivering again. She was trying desperately to keep from falling into another fit of panic. She had to try to keep herself together. She
had to try to be strong. The city is alive. Well…as alive as Vlad may be. It was all around her. Zadok was not lying. If this thing served its master in the same way all the rest did, it could keep them wandering about for days.
But she also knew it would not stop the hunters from trying.
“Hey, uh, Al?” Eddie interrupted the silence.
“We are not turning back.”
“No, that’s not what I was gonna ask.” Eddie shifted uncomfortably. “All your books. All the Helsing legends. Um. Did any of them mention anything about a whole city turning into a giant, bloodthirsty monster?”
Alfonzo’s shoulders slumped. “No.”
Eddie groaned. He summed up nicely, and with a perfectly crass choice of words, her exact opinion on the subject. “Oh, good. We’re fucked.”
4
They walked for hours among the twisted streets and the dead. And as the vampire had warned, they seemed to make no progress despite their march. Boston was not that large a city. By this point, she should have been able to walk from her home in the Back Bay to the waterfront and back. But with no landmarks she could identify, she couldn’t even say which way they were headed.
Only that it seemed to do no good.
They marched. And with every hour, warped creations that seemed birthed from nightmares dogged their steps. Maxine did not know that she would ever become adjusted to the sight of them.
One creature had eyes that seemed to cover every inch of its body. They opened and shut in undulating waves. When it died, it had burst into flame that glowed a bright blue and reduced its remains to ash. Which was for the best.
There were enough bodies.
When they were too tired to continue—or they claimed to be out of pity for her aching feet and slowing gait—Alfonzo had chosen a home and knocked. He shouted for whoever was inside to open the door, and that they meant no harm. No one answered, so he kicked the front door in. Thankfully, no one was home. Nor were there corpses littering the floor.
She sank down onto a sofa in the home’s drawing room. Eddie took up a spot by the window, keeping watch for if they were being pursued. Bella went to scrounge for food while Alfonzo searched the building for trouble.
Curse of Dracula Page 3
